ICANN Releases Draft For New TLDs 168
NdJ writes "Looks like a whole new domain name battle ground is about to open up. ICANN have just made available their How to Apply for a New Generic Top-Level Domain Draft Applicant Guidebook. It won't be cheap for the individual, but certainly achievable for many domain-name-pimps. 'The Evaluation Fee is designed to make the new gTLD program self-funding only. This was a recommendation of the Generic names Supporting Organization. A detailed costing methodology — including historical program development costs, and predictable and uncertain costs associated with processing new gTLD applications through to delegation in the root zone — estimates a per applicant fee of $US185,000. This is the estimated cost per evaluation in the first application round.'"
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Greed
Might as well... (Score:4, Insightful)
The .com, .net, and .org domains have meant absolutely jack-squat for years now. May as well open up the field.
Of course, this means a company like McDonalds will now be forced to register "mcdonalds.[every possible alphanumeric string]" -- this ought to be interesting.
Re:Why now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let the Confusion Begin (Score:4, Insightful)
As if things weren't dificult enough to your average Joe Internet User. Most people have a hard enough time understanding that not all websites end in .com as it is.
Re:Why now? (Score:3, Insightful)
Cash rules everything around me. CREAM Get the money, dollar dollar bill y'all.
They just want money, and to hell with the consequences. It's not going to be pretty when any scammer can get their hands on www.citibank.con or www.citibank.corn
Re:What individuals would apply? (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. Google has assloads of money, so they register the TLD "google". Then they can provide "groups.google," "search.google," "gmail.google," "maps.google," et cetera. Same for companies like McDonald's, Microsoft, Chase Bank, et cetera. Every big company that can afford it will use the TLD as their domain name, and ICANN will get solid gold Ferraris from the money they rake in.
Meanwhile, do you think Ubuntu will be able to pony up the money for "get.ubuntu"? How will it look when "www.fedora.org" has to compete with "get.windows"?
The .com, .net, and .org TLDs will become the "subsidized housing" of the Net, where all those who can't pony up the cash have to stick their domains.
Re:What individuals would apply? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then IBM, Microsoft, and Jenna Jameson file complaints with ICANN, who use their Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy to automatically award the names to the trademark holders. And, of course, ICANN get even more money out of this, since it costs money to file the complaint.
ICANN found a way to make things worse! (Score:5, Insightful)
Previously, domain registrars were obligated to abide by the registrars terms set forth by ICANN/Internic as part of their terms for being a registrar in the ICANN-controlled TLDs. But if ICANN is going to sell new TLDs outright, they are handing over the keys entirely. Just wait until people start buying TLDs that are misspelled variants of viagra. Then we'll see spam floods from those and nobody will be accountable for the bogus pharmacies under those domains that are selling poison across the internet.
I agree, ICANN's time has come and gone. It should be replaced by an international organization with international allies for international goals and solving international problems. Anyone who thinks that the US can solve the spam problem just by passing new laws is a fool.
Re:Why now? (Score:3, Insightful)
Golly. If only somebody could do it for under thirteen million. *cough* *choke*
Let me be the first to call bullshit. While there's no question vetting a new tld is a bit of work you have to keep in mind the number of alternative tlds grew from 0 to over one thousand, ten years ago, and nobody spent a dime. They just put their servers where their mouths were and just did it.
The cool thing about this issue popping up 10 years later (dormant that long because icann went and chased trademark issues for a decade just to find out, as we pointed out, "existing laws work") is that no matter what point you're thinking of, it's been brought up already and settled either on paper or in practice.
Re:What individuals would apply? (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably. Mark Shuttleworth made nearly $600mil prior to setting up Canonical. :)
Re:What individuals would apply? (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, do you think Ubuntu will be able to pony up the money for "get.ubuntu"? How will it look when "www.fedora.org" has to compete with "get.windows"?
It will look exactly the same, most of the people today don't type domain names, they just use a search engine and click on the first link. They won't even know what a domain name is or where to find it.
Re:Why now? (Score:2, Insightful)
I always assumed the reason behind .org, .net, .com and country TLDs was to keep things organized and consistent. Why have they decided to do what appears to me as simply going back on themselves?
I always assumed the reason behind .org, .net, .com and country TLDs was to keep things organized and consistent. Why have they decided to do what appears to me as simply going back on themselves?
it looks like they could not resist the cash call of going from a tidy, organised vertical hierarchy to a flat, horizontal fuck-up of a system, devolving control and allowing any old pleb to set up a tld at the right price. So where does this stop? 10 tld, 100ltd. TLD for ALL !!!1
Re:Might as well... (Score:5, Insightful)
a company like McDonalds will now be forced to register "mcdonalds.[every possible alphanumeric string]"
I suspect this will actually force them to register "*.mcdonalds" as a TLD. And likewise with other big companies.
Actually, the parent poster had a better point. What's to stop someone from registering "McDonalds.Hamburger", "McDonalds.Fries", or "McDonalds.restaurant", other than the cost.
A lot of generic domain keywords are often used to usurp specific names. It should would be confusing if you Googled "McDonalds" and you got the above domains along with "[whatever].McDonalds". Likely having to lead to major companies having to drop a lot on custom TLDs or fighting people infringing their trademark and diluting their brand.
As cool as the idea is, being a web dev. myself, I just see this becoming an even more chaotic mess than before. How much will the ".sex" TLD go for? What's a person going to do with a ".restaurant" or ".france" domain?
One thing is for certain... Google and all other search engines will have a heck of a time trying to devise new algorithms to return relevancy, especially if someone registered a ".restaurant" TLD and then uses it as a "restaurant networking site" (like a social networking site) and charges memberships to create "McDonalds.restaurant" or whatever?
Uph! Lots of work for the Search Engine folks, let alone new ways for SEO wizards to try and abuse and game the competition. And in the end, the internet "surfers" will be worse off unless some sort of standard comes about to keep it organized. But, perhaps not. It certainly doesn't look good on paper, to me.
Re:Makes some sense... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:13 mil for a tld? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but really, do we even need TLDs at all anymore, if they're going to allow anyone with enough cash to register a TLD, why not just do away with them altogether.
http://slashdot/ [slashdot]
http://google/ [google]
http://microsoft/ [microsoft]
etc.
Realistically this would be better than having them register "http://*.google/", "http://*.microsoft/", etc. and would basically achieve the same purpose, TLDs were originally made to keep things organised, clearly they no longer want that.
Of course this would probably cause problems if you have "foo.com" and "foo.org" fighting over "foo"
Re:Let the Confusion Begin (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually it IS everyone's problem if technology is too hard to understand. People don't want to know how all this crap works and they're right.
Also, even if you do understand technology but others don't, it's still your problem (see: SPAM and botnets/Windows PC zombies).
Here is the mandatory car analogy:
I'm not a mechanic yet I can still drive my car.
Re:13 mil for a tld? (Score:3, Insightful)
Christian, uh, forgot his last name, the guy in the BOFH and Usenet II discussions, set .DOT up in 94. It still works. You just can't see it. But that's your choice how you configure what servers you believe to tell you what tlds exist.
http://slash.dot/ [slash.dot] has worked just about forever. I've always found it amusing slashdotters never noticed, even when other poeople did.
Re:Now all i need is 185K for .sex (Score:3, Insightful)
Marc Hurst set this up in 96. It still works. You just can't see it. But that's your choice how you configure what servers you believe to tell you what tlds exist.
Let's do the math (Score:4, Insightful)
$185k per TLD application
$ wc -l /usr/share/dict/words /usr/share/dict/words
479625
that makes
$ dc
185000
479625*p
88730625000
Eighty-eight billion, seven hundred thirty million, six hundred twenty-five thousand dollars.
And no sense.